Monday, 26 August 2013

This is the second half of a look back at the best of Winnipeg’s 2012-13 arts season. The first post, which looked at the best classical music concerts in the city, can be read here.

As I noted in the first part of this series, Winnipeg is such a culturally-rich city that it's impossible to see everything - and, in rare cases, this doesn't apply to specific events, but to the kind of event you plan to go to.

When I had the idea for these two posts back in January, I knew that one would probably be about classical music, and I thought the other might be about theatre. It soon became clear, however, that I hadn't seen enough theatre, from enough companies, to make a comprehensive "best-of" list. I'd enjoyed the plays I'd seen at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, though, so I decided to create a retrospective of the plays at the RMTC's John Hirsch Mainstage and Tom Hendry Warehouse over the 2012-13 season.

As this is a personal list looking at an individual theatre company, I've labeled each category as "Most Outstanding" instead of "Best". I've also put plays and musicals together under Most Outstanding Production, purely for convenience's sake. As well, Assassins and Ride the Cyclone: A Musical both had ensemble casts, so actors and actresses from those two plays have been included in the Supporting categories.

In Gone With the Wind, Sarah Constible fully embraced playwright Niki Landau's daring interpretation of notoriously flimsy Melanie Hamilton Wilkes and made her a fully-realized human being just as strong as her friend Scarlett. In The Penelopiad, Constible was one of the highlights of an all-female cast that took on male roles when required in Margaret Atwood's retelling of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. Her performance as Odysseus was both an illuminating take on the character, and, when in disguise during the archery competition to win the hand of Odysseus' wife Penelope, a welcome source of comic relief.

4. Lora Brovold - Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway (A Few Good Men)While Joanne Galloway was the lone female character in A Few Good Men's otherwise all-male cast, playwright Aaron Sorkin and actress Lora Brovold made it clear that Galloway was not simply present to provide an additional perspective on the play's events. Brovold's assured, intelligent and nuanced portrayal of Galloway made for one of the most captivating and memorable performances in what was an impressive start to RMTC's 2012-13 season.

Of the six teenaged characters in Ride the Cyclone's cast, blonde overachiever Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg may have felt the most familiar to audiences, and therefore perhaps the easiest, or most irresistible, to caricature. Rielle Braid and the musical's writers, Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond, certainly poked fun at the character's most Tracy Flick-like mannerisms (Ocean's solo number was an uptempo litany of her myriad accomplishments), and her interactions with The Amazing Karnack, the snarky fortune-telling machine that served as the musical's narrator, provided some of Ride the Cyclone's biggest laughs. However, Braid never lost sight of the genuine compassion just beneath Ocean's competitive outlook, which made the character's final decision as to the fates of her fellow choristers even more emotionally resonant.

If it's possible for musicals to have "breakout characters," I feel like Ride the Cyclone's would be Constance Blackwood, due largely in part to Kelly Sue Hudson's powerful performance. Constance, burdened with the title of "nicest girl in town", second fiddle to her supportive but driven friend Ocean, seemingly destined to stay in Uranium City for the rest of her life, was among Ride the Cyclone's most complex characters. Constance's number "Sugar Cloud", which showed off Hudson's incredible pipes, was a high point in a musical filled with memorable numbers and performances. Hudson greatly impressed me the first time I saw the musical with a theatre full of people in their 20s and 30s, but when I saw Ride the Cyclone again, this time with an older audience, I was able to further appreciate the subtlety and dignity Hudson brought to the imbued the role.

1. Miche Braden - Mammy (Gone With the Wind)

It's not every day that an actor or actress gets to do a previously one-dimensional character justice. Miche Braden's dignified, independent Mammy lived up to Niki Landau's thrillingly and refreshingly complex interpretation of the character. Mammy's opening scene with young Miss O'Hara set the tone for the character's powerful arc, and her speech prior to leaving Scarlett in Act III made more than one audience member's eyes fill with tears. Braden'sperformance may have been the most compelling indication of Gone With the Wind's success as an adaptation and as an individual piece of theatre.

Most Outstanding Supporting Actor

5. Steve Ross - Charles Guiteau (Assassins)

Steve Ross' portrayal of Charles Guiteau, Andrew Garfield's killer, was one of Assassins' most satisfying performances. In a musical where dialogue mattered as much as lyrics, Guiteau's constant, aggressive declarations of his own importance were genuinely hilarious, even as they hinted at the troubled soul within. This approach culminated in the number depicting Guiteau's death, in which the fervently religious man sang "I Am Going to the Lordy" as every muscle and fibre in his body pulled him both toward and away from the steps leading up to the scaffold where his noose waited.

4. Kholby Wardell - Noel Gruber (Ride the Cyclone: A Musical)

As with several other characters in Ride the Cyclone's cast, Noel Gruber - an artistic gay teenager who feels like an outcast in the society he lives in, here the rural wasteland of Uranium City, Saskatchewan - had many familiar characteristics, but these were traits that Kholby Wardell and the musical's writers took great pleasure in turning on their heads. His rousing cabaret-esque solo number, a fantasy about living as a prostitute named Monique in 19th-century France, brought down the house both nights, but Wardell also hit quieter notes that echoed Gruber's own development over the course of the musical.

3. Elliott Loran - Ricky Potts (Ride the Cyclone: A Musical)

Ricky Potts was probably Ride the Cyclone's most ambitious character: a imaginative boy born with cystic fibrosis who, in the afterlife, is finally able to voice his dreams of being a "Space Age Bachelor Man." Ricky's gently self-deprecating nature was a pleasant surprise, and his love of comic books and video games appealed to the geeks in the audience; more than that, though, Loran masterfully conveyed Ricky's quiet realization that his newfound voice might not get to be heard by anyone in the land of the living.

2. Graham Abbey - Sam Byck (Assassins)

Of all the assassins in Stephen Sondheim and John Weiden's musical, Sam Byck, played by Graham Abbey, was probably most representative of the darkly comedic mood which ran throughout the musical. Abbey's sarcastic rendition of "Tonight" from West Side Story was hysterically funny, as was his blubbering impersonation of Richard Nixon, the president Byck tried to assassinate by flying a plane into the White House. What made Abbey's performance truly stand out among a universally excellent ensemble cast, however, was his chilling speech about the distinctions we create between good and evil - and how these categories may be more fluid than one might want to admit.

Paul Essiembre's performance as the domineering, intimidating Col. Jessep in A Few Good Men alone would have earned him a place on this list. Essiembre's role as the more subdued middle manager William Coles in Other People's Money, however, demonstrated a impressive range that proved to be one of the most pleasant surprises of the season. Coles, arguably the 'hero' of Jerry Sterner's script - although, in the world of Other People's Money, there may be no explicit good or bad, only context - was, personality-wise, worlds away from Jessup, but both men were grounded in a sense that their actions were ultimately for the best. Head below the break for the Most Outstanding Lead Actresses, Lead Actors and Productions.